


This Is Right Where It Begins

by angeloncewas



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Apocalypse, Clay | Dream-centric (Video Blogging RPF), M/M, Natural Disasters, Oblivious Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Pre-Relationship, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, Unbeta'd, i wrote an entire dnf fic based on a schlatt quote is what i did, of sorts, probably a tad ooc, there's other dsmp characters but i dont use their names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29959788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas
Summary: Dream's trapped in a cabin with a bunch of people he only sort-of knows. It might be the end of the world. It might be a Tuesday. It might even be both.-“Before the waters rose, I was an accountant.”“That’s boring,” Dream says, before he can stop himself.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 101





	This Is Right Where It Begins

**Author's Note:**

> This entire AU was created around a quote from Wilbur's "[Minecraft, but Every 5 Minutes the Sea Level Rises](https://youtu.be/UFhTkAj_J0U)" video

They all like to say they saw it coming.

Everyone in their little group does, caught behind curtains of fear and the openness that comes with living in such close quarters. Everyone pretends they saw the future on the horizon, pretends it was their preparation that landed them here; in a shelter on the top of a mountain so high, sometimes the clouds look like you might be able to reach out and grab one.

Quackity, the loudmouth with a beanie and an out-of-tune guitar, is the first to break the tentative silence that stretches across them, a blanket with little protection against the cold.

He’s already broken it plenty of times, shattered it under his foot even, between games he tricks people into playing and the sheer amount of space in the air the sound waves of his voice take up, but this topic is new, an unspoken taboo, a curse put upon the facts behind their situation.

“I don’t even know how to swim,” Quackity confesses one morning.

It’s a day like any other, rain pouring from the sky, slick against their sealed windows. It’s an ordinary day until he decides it’s time to break their shared illusion open, and it remains ordinary for a couple seconds after. Just until the quietest, most enigmatic person in their group - a tall, silent man who can take down a bird with one shot and somehow manages to make pink look intimidating - starts laughing.

The guy’s been Dream’s adversary ever since he arrived, though Dream isn’t quite sure if he knows that the feud is going on. He brings back the best game the quickest, doesn’t seem to mind that no one ever talks to him, and he has the same kind of unorthodox name: Techno. Dream can’t have a single thing to himself and that is what makes a rivalry, come rain or sleet or snow or hail, even if Sapnap calls him petty and tells him to shut up every time he brings it up.

Something about watching that guy - _The Blade,_ one of the kids had called him when he’d arrived, all wide-eyed and awestruck - take in shuddering breaths, his laughter sharp and staccato, makes Dream start laughing too. His lungs squeeze as he tries to talk through his lightheadedness and the way the main-room-gathered crowd looks at the two of them like they’ve lost it; honestly, maybe they have.

“I-” Dream struggles, wheezing some more. “I used to be scared of the ocean.”

It’s not funny, not really, but it’s also so _ridiculous_ , like _this-must-be-a-sitcom, cut-the-cameras_ ridiculous, that he hears a snort across the room, followed by the titter of voices picking up, people finding groups of people to share their terrible luck with.

He hears Wilbur, who takes care of the kids and who he’s spoken to a couple of times, tell the girl to his left that someone had warned him about the floods a few hours early, and he had simply rolled over and gone back to bed, only to find his area evacuated.

The girl replies that she was planning to just _“wait out the rain”_ with her brother, until they simultaneously realized that the rain was about to consume them, and they fled with what little belongings they could collect.

“The most ready thing I brought with me was my acting skills,” says the guy beside her, presumably her brother. His grin is sly and his copper hair glints under the hanging lamps. “I think I told like, twelve people my first day that I’m a survivalist.”

A deep voice coated in irritation pipes up; the person it belongs to is so tall he seems to tower over the three sitting at the counter, but the last one who spoke scoots over toward his sister on the bench to make room for him. “You’re telling me that was a lie?”

“What, did you actually believe me?”

“I mean, I tend to believe people when they tell me stuff about themselves.”

“Well that’s - that’s stupid.”

“What? No it’s not.” He turns to the girl, split-dye hair sharp halves of black and white that ruffle together when he moves. “Niki, tell me something about yourself.”

“Um… I um…” Niki taps two fingers in tandem against the marble in some haphazard rhythm. “I bake?”

He looks at her as though she’s just given him all the secrets of the universe, grave and determined. “I believe you.”

Wilbur bursts out laughing and the four form a sort of huddle in their claimed space, while Dream chides himself for staring and stands up to stretch his limbs, still fatigued from sleep. _Maybe I’ll go watch the water,_ he thinks to himself, then rolls his eyes, _how fun._

Their home, if you could call it that, is someone’s vacation home, a cabin with very little in any direction. Dream isn’t sure if the owner is among them, or if they’re committing a misdemeanor, but he honestly can’t be bothered to care. Desperate times call and all that.

He’s always been the sort to act before anything else anyway. You won’t receive an answer you don’t like if you never ask.

The second floor is largely just bedrooms, mostly shared and cramped together, doors left open for people to come and go as they please, dodging limbs and avoiding shining light in anyone’s eyes, but there’s a balcony at its edge. It was probably a huge tourist attraction at some point or another, but it dangles precariously over the side of their mountain and as Dream steps onto it to stare over the edge, he can’t help but wonder if anyone here hates him enough to push him off.

He’s almost the one to do it to himself, only a few seconds later, jumping as a voice shocks him out of his turmoil.

Dream turns around. “Huh?”

“Before the waters rose, I was an accountant,” comes the echo, soft and with a lilting accent.

It’s attached to a face he vaguely recognizes from meals and the like. He can’t put a name to it, or even a distinct memory, but there’s something familiar in the way the guy’s brown hair kind of slumps and his eyes glitter back light like water droplets. 

“That’s boring,” Dream says, before he can stop himself.

The guy laughs and Dream startles a bit at the sound. Nothing tired or bitter behind it, something crisp and clear not even found in the hysteria from just prior. It rings like a bell in some distant memory of dry land and people Dream’s long let go of.

Said guy sits down on what’s a surely over-priced lawn chair, his feet kicked up onto the one across from him. He’s wearing these weird glasses - _clout goggles,_ Dream’s mind supplies - but he at least seems more muted than Quackity, the last person who’d come up to the balcony to make small talk, so Dream says nothing about the way he’s just decided to stay.

“It _was_ boring,” he replies with cheer. “Horrifically so. But I made a lot of money.”

Dream huffs. “And it made you humble.”

“Hey, you started ‘honesty hour.’”

_“Definitely_ didn’t start it.”

“Continued it, whatever.”

Dream glances at the wilderness around them, the fish leaping gracefully out of the water only to lie, panting on treetops. They’ve been lucky, so far, too high up to have wet carpeting or straight-up submersion, but the worry is there all the time.

“The lying was getting stupid at this point,” he says simply. “Yesterday I overheard Karl telling some poor guy that he had an underground bunker in case of a situation like this.”

“That… doesn’t even make sense.”

“The guy wasn’t having it, don’t worry.” Something pops as Dream rolls his neck and it’s so loud that the two of them wince at the same time. Dream really needs to get more sleep, but it’s not that easy. “He said ‘why are you here then?’ and Karl had to just awkwardly walk away.”

The guy smiles at that - at him, at the story that’s not actually that funny - so wide and bright it looks more like the horizon than anything Dream’s seen in all his hours of watching the world. “This might be a bad time to say, but I don’t know who Karl is.”

Dream maneuvers around the table to the third lawn chair and pushes back the one the guy has his feet on till he can prop his up on it too. The guy lets out a gasp of mock offense before moving over and Dream watches his worn out tennis shoes bounce against much more clean ones.

“This might be a bad time to say,” Dream imitates, “but I don’t know who _you_ are.”

The guy’s expression curls in on itself a little as he lifts up his goggles and his brows knit. Something inside of Dream shrinks and shrivels with it; he’s not sure what’s changed in that brief moment, but he misses it the moment it’s gone.

“I’m George,” he says. “Were you-” George cuts himself off abruptly and sighs. “You weren’t at the getting-to-know-you thing, were you?”

“Getting-to-know...you?”

“Yeah, it was a little while ago, we did the ‘Hi, my name is ‘blank’’ thing.”

Dream racks his brain for a time that could’ve happened without him, but he comes up blank. In high school he always mildly enjoyed the ease of first day activities, memorizing names and faces and random facts while others stuttered over their answers.

He’s never lacked confidence, if nothing else. Not that the same attitude that drew coaches to him can push the water away, but if it could, they’d be in a hell of a better position than they are now.

“Do you know why I wasn’t there?”

George runs a hand through the fringe of his hair and seems to think, the rain pattering a metronome to his thought process. “You might’ve been getting food? I don’t think Techno was there either.”

_Ah. That would be it._

Dream doesn’t know exactly when it was, since him and Techno go hunting (more accurately, Techno decides to go and Dream scrambles to catch up because _they are at war goddammit_ and he will not let some random college kid show him up) fairly often.

It might’ve been right near the start, when they’d stopped having new arrivals and everything had begun to settle; the house had a bit more bustle than usual one morning and Dream remembers Sapnap commenting on how everyone seemed to be up-and-at-em at once. Dream had noticed Techno getting ready to head out and he’d asked if he could go along, determined to finally beat the guy.

(He hadn’t, Techno had found a deer who’d managed to escape the flooding, and Dream had come back with nothing but fish and exhaustion.)

“Did you not wonder how everyone made friends?” George asks.

Dream can't hide the soft flush of embarrassment that claws at his skin.”I thought no one liked me.”

It sounds petulant and childish, to put it that way, but he knows his own tendency to come off as abrasive. Dream’s always been one to start with all his cards on the table and people have always seen his openness as something more akin to aggression. 

He figures that’s why, for all his insistence that they are mortal enemies, him and Techno get along. Going for food is dangerous - no one really knows what’s out there or how fast the water will rise once it gets going - so it’s a job best left to people without much to leave behind.

Dream has Sapnap, obviously, but Sapnap... _gets him._ They’ve talked about how to go on without each other even before the whole water thing. Now, they both know that Dream would dive straight in before letting someone like Wilbur or Phil even step foot out there. Sapnap probably would too; it just isn’t worth the theoretical loss, the kids need them more than anyone needs Dream.

Under conditions like these, the idea of friends has always felt unimportant in comparison.

George is frowning, lips flattened and curled, eyes soft, expression hesitant. It makes Dream feel like his thoughts are being read and picked apart, like he’s said something wrong even though he hasn’t really said much.

He feels the most random urge to offer something, something to bring back the gentle light of before their introduction, but he has nothing other than some crap he brought from his house and the best aquatic animals he can find, so he pushes his hands into his pockets and shrugs one shoulder.

“You’re joking,” George says finally.

“What?”

“About people not liking you. Everybody knows your name.” He pauses, raising his eyebrows. “You _are_ Dream, right?”

Dream rolls his eyes and George squints at him in a gesture of returned exasperation. “That doesn’t mean anything. I introduced myself when I got here and after that it just spread around.”

“Yeah, but they all say good things about you too.”

“They do?”

It’s George’s turn to roll his eyes and Dream nudges the guy’s foot with his own as he does. “Where have you been?” George questions.

It’s rhetorical. Sarcastic. They’ve been in this big hideout of a home for months now, waiting for _something, or someone,_ Dream doesn’t know and isn’t about to ask.

There’s a bit of truth in it however, as he thinks about who he actually knows out of the people he’s been around for so long. Hardly more than names and faces, other than Sapnap. Conversations here and there, a tidbit or two he picks up over stale bread crusts and leftover fish.

It’s like he’s been lonely without processing it all this time. Like just a bit ago, leaving a room full of people in conversations to go watch the water alone.

“So,” Dream segues, unwilling to follow that train of thought to a station with boarded-up windows, “an accountant, huh?”

George scans his face at the abrupt shift in topic, but whatever he finds there just makes him shake his head and tilt his chair back to where his goggles hang precariously from his hair. “Yup. Want me to help you file your taxes?”

“You said it was boring.”

“It’s probably more fun than staring into the void, which is what you seem to like.”

Dream hits the side of George’s shoe again, but George hits back this time, and Dream tries halfheartedly to shove the other guy’s feet off of the chair as he thinks. “Would you have kept doing it?”

George swallows hard, humor lost in his processing of the question. Emotions flicker underneath his skin in a way Dream can’t quite decipher, some language he hasn’t learned to read.

“I don’t know. I-” George falters. “If I said something terrible, how much would you judge me?”

Dream answers honestly. “Depends on how bad it is.”

“Just sort of… morally… wrong?”

Dream lifts his feet off of the chair and tucks them under the table to where he’s facing George directly. “Hit me with it.”

He can feel his heartbeat attempt to sync up with the rain and it feels like it speeds as he watches George mirror what he just did, tucking in the third chair with his foot and lacing his fingers together on the table. He looks weirdly graceful in the motion, in the slant of his jaw and the tilt of his chin as he ponders his words.

“I was… _excited…”_ he says slowly, “when the water started rising.”

“Is this another preparation lie?” Dream interrupts.

George doesn’t seem offended, slight tension seeming to drain from the deep pool of his brown eyes as he laughs, sharp and bright. “No, nothing like that. I wasn’t prepared at all. I was just excited.”

“Why?”

A faraway look clashes with the awareness of his expression, something distant making its way into this exact moment. George is less emotive than he is, or maybe Dream just needs to expand his vocabulary for him because he has absolutely no idea what George is thinking about.

It strikes him, like a clap of lighting in the downpour, how much he _does_ want to know. 

This isn’t small talk, this is the kind of stuff you tell the people who matter. Even though the world looks a lot more blue, he doesn’t think much is different about social norms, at least where personal information is concerned. George is sharing his relief for what might be the end of the world; that kind of trust means something.

It feels like when Techno had gotten sick and told him that he was sure Dream could get enough food on his own. Techno hadn’t meant it as a compliment really, just as acknowledgement of what was there, but that vote of confidence still managed to convey: _I see you._

“I was so bored. All the time.” George says, tone emphatic. “This was new and exciting.” He fiddles with the metal edge of the table like it might snap if he presses on it the right way. “I feel so guilty about it now, like ‘everyone might die and you’re happy you can escape your dead-end job?’ but I was. I still am. The _universe_ forced me to change my life.”

Dream sets his chin in his hands and closes his eyes for a second. “I thought you were going to make me an accomplice in a crime or something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know! You said ‘morally wrong,’ I thought _‘uh oh, this guy’s got some skeletons in his closet._ ’”

George laughs. “Now I know what you think of me.”

Dream smiles back at him till George breaks eye contact and looks towards the skyline, the faintest tinge of pink flitting across his cheeks. “That’s not bad, George,” Dream says quietly. “I promise you. I can’t say _I_ was excited, but I’m sure some people were.”

“How about now?” George jokes, but there’s something soft behind it, something that makes Dream feel like he’s been missing out for way too long.

He opens his mouth to answer when the screen door to the hallway slams against the back wall as someone opens it and he jumps at the sound. George stifles a laugh behind his hand as Dream presses his face into the table in defeat.

“Sorry,” Sapnap says. “I expected a door-stopper.”

Dream looks up only to see Sapnap silently scanning the two of them, studying the space between him and George, back and forth and back again, like a cat fixed on some fleeting prey. Sapnap smirks. 

“I didn't know you two were _flirting_ up here,” his voice fills to the brim with exaggerated remorse, as if he’s just interrupted life-changing progress instead of a conversation.

“Shut up,” Dream replies automatically, watching the corners of George’s eyes crinkle a little when he grins.

Okay, so, maybe Sapnap _has_ interrupted something life-changing.

He doesn’t seem to care, regardless, resting a hand on the door and checking to make sure he didn’t break it before nodding in the direction he came. “We decided to crack out some of the canned food, so if you wanna come eat.”

They could stay on the balcony, wave off Sapnap waiting for them in the doorway - Dream wonders, briefly, if Sapnap already knows George, if he’s been the only one who’s been missing out this entire time - but Dream is vaguely hungry, and the air is cold and biting, and they’ve probably said more than enough for a first meeting.

Not that Dream doesn’t have more to say; he has a hundred questions, the least interesting of them about accounting and the most interesting, ones he should probably save for when they know each other better. It’s new, it’s fragile, it’s mildly alarming. Dream wants to wrap it in bubble-wrap or something dumb like that to keep it intact, but even that’s probably a lot for the time being and he tries not to let himself get carried away.

Dream points at Sapnap like a suggestion and George smiles and that’s that; he can practically hear the roll of Sapnap’s eyes as he waits for George to walk in first and they trail down the hallway in a line.

The dining room is large, but very close to overcrowded. Tables are pushed together to make for more seating space and some couples sit on each other's laps while the reverberation of steady voices rings across the room. It’s not perfect, it’s honestly kind of a mess, but there’s something about it that makes a tucked-away part of Dream’s heart ache.

Techno has also apparently decided to make an appearance for once, sitting next to Phil at a table by the window and scowling at something one of the kids is saying. Tommy, the loudest one, introduced as such to Dream by Wilbur in some dually affectionate-slash-disgusted spiel.

He’s relentless energy at best and an annoying teenager at worst and today he appears to be somewhere in the middle.

“Hey, big D!” Tommy calls, and Dream grimaces at the nickname he definitely never asked for. “You wanna eat at our table?”

Dream pauses. “Why’re you asking?”

Tommy doesn’t waver, just exchanges a glance with the brunette who sits pressed against his side like they’re joined at the hip and schools his expression into one of solemnity. “We’ll be the coolest ones here if we have Techno _and_ Dream.”

Phil gives a sympathetic smile and an encouraging nod wrapped up into one, ever the father-figure, even to semi-strangers. Dream looks at George, who’s idly picking at the skin on his thumb.

“You wanna?”

George seems slightly startled, but he nods. “Sure.”

Abrupt movement comes between whatever else is there; Sapanap both literally and figuratively sticks his nose in their exchange once more.

“Why are you asking him and not me?” he whines with a pout. He ducks as Dream flicks lightly at his cheek.

“Because,” Dream says. “You’d come with me either way.”

Sapnap grumbles, but sits down opposite him and George as they take to the end of the table beside the two kids. Tommy’s practically buzzing with energy and Techno and Phil watch him with an identical sort of weary-and-wary-ness.

Niki, the girl from before, drops by to hand out cups of water and Dream takes one and thanks her by name, for once. She seems surprised, but she gives a tiny bow in jest before responding to a call from someone across the room.

“So how’d you get Techno to sit here, anyway?” Dream asks Tommy playfully, taking a sip of his water as Tommy stills and cocks his head.

“Where else would he sit?” Tommy answers. He doesn’t have a lick of humor in his tone. Nothing other than bluntness, as though Dream’s question doesn’t even make sense. “I’m not brothers with ‘ _The Blade’_ just so that he can eat with other people.”

There’s some debate, led by Phil with occasional input from Tommy’s brown-haired friend, about how Tommy isn’t “brothers with” anybody for anything - that’s not how biology works - but Dream is too busy choking on his water to pay attention.

“Brothers?” he wheezes out, coughing into his sleeve. George pats his back sympathetically and Techno gives him an almost-smile behind the same, ever-fixed, deadpan expression.

He stares on in bafflement as Techno shies away from Wilbur when he walks over and tries to ruffle the guy’s pink hair before sitting down, Sapnap snickers when Dream dramatically leans on George like he needs the crutch to stay upright.

“Where have you _been?”_ George asks again, a murmur-laugh into his shoulder

“I don’t know,” Dream groans, flopping a hand across his forehead while a bowl filled with some kind of mush is passed down to him. Sapnap catches Dream’s gaze just as it flickers up from the drum of George’s fingertips against his own thigh and the look he’s given, while still mocking and full of _we’re-going-to-be-talking-about-this later,_ is soft and genuine.

_I don’t know_ , Dream repeats to himself, biting the inside of his cheek, _but I’m happy to be here now._

**Author's Note:**

> Finally:
> 
> \- I have absolutely no idea what this is  
> \- It's been incomplete in my drafts for months and I finally finished it  
> \- Sorry if the romantic bits felt off - I'm good at writing complex relationships, but not at all simple love  
> \- Check out my Tumblr! Same @, I posted my plights in writing this lol


End file.
